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HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WOLFIE!Austria Gives Mozart His DueBy Sharon McDonnellSALZBURG -
And that's in an average year. This year is "the most challenging ever in logistic, financial, and creative ways" for the Salzburg Festival, says festival president Dr. Helga Ruhl-Stadler, who noted 14 concert halls were used this year, instead of the usual six. "But we need innovation to keep on top. We wanted to show how he matured musically, and hope listeners will discover a Mozart they did not know until now." So who was the man behind the adulation? "He was as tall as Danny DeVito and had a pox in his youth, but was very attractive to women," according to Horst Reischenbock, a former music critic, author of the Salzburg chapter in Fodor's Vienna to Salzburg guidebook, and now a guide in Salzburg. That's a far cry from homage like "in Mozart we have the divine instinct...without a trace of human struggle," from composer Edvard Grieg. Though Mozart was one of the greatest geniuses of all time and the rock star of his day, Mozart 2006 - the name for this year's events, which last until January 2007 - seeks to humanize him as a playful fellow with a penchant for gambling, card games, billiards, shooting targets with an air rifle and an off-color sense of humor. Someone you'd enjoy having a beer with, and perhaps lend money to - he was a spendthrift from whom money flowed as effortlessly as his melodies. The revisionist approach will surprise noone who's seen Amadeus, the Oscar-winning 1984 movie adapted from Peter Shaffer's stage play, where he's a childish imp with a nervous giggle. Mozart 2006 also explores the historic and cultural context in which Mozart flowered, and views him through a contemporary lens, as perhaps the first freelance composer. Forced to scramble for commissions after quitting working for Prince-Archbishop Hieronymus Graf Colloredo in 1781, disgruntled at being treated like a servant composing "table music" for meals and being the Cathedral organist, he fled to Vienna for a life free of the bonds of patronage. Here's a short list of things to see and hear in Austria this year: Salzburg: Mozart 2006 opened with the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt on January 27, Mozart's birthday, at a ceremony the Mozarteum. A gala concert that night, starting at the hour of his birth, was conducted by Riccardo Muti, starring soprano Renee Fleming. In a special "Best of Mozart" series, 30 weekend concerts of his best-known symphonies and most popular opera arias and overtures will be performed through November. Candlelight dinner concerts (musicians and singers in 18th-century costume play "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik" and sing from his operas) almost nightly in the Baroque Hall of St. Peter's Monastery, where a restaurant has stood since the visit of Charlemagne in 803, let listeners pretend they are back in Mozart's day.
Coming home was a rude shock, as Mozart lived with his parents and sister in the modest four-room apartment here until he was 17. Family portraits-like one of the seven-year-old Mozart, bewigged and in fancy court costume with a gold-embroidered jacket, and one of his mother, a warmhearted, good-humored woman he resembled - plus his child-sized violin, clavichord, jeweled ring and embroidered silk wallet are on display. The unusual installation was created by Robert Wilson, the American avant-garde opera director and stage designer. A big multimedia exhibit, Viva! Mozart, celebrates his birthday with virtual voices from people in his life, including his patrons - the Prince-Archbishops who ruled Salzburg - family, and contemporaries at the Neue Residenz, a former palace of the Prince-Archbishops. Visitors also can learn the minuet and bolt-shooting - both passions of Mozart - hear about the women in his life (his first love was his loyal wife Constanze's older sister, Aloysia, before he married, and he wrote ribald letters to his fun-loving cousin, Maria), sample the food and drink he enjoyed (seems he had a thing for almond milk), and view the autographed manuscript of his first composition. Evening concerts of chamber music occur nightly in Hohensalzburg Fortress, the 11th-century cliff-top castle looming above the domes, spires, and narrow alleys of the Alstadt (Old Town). And there are numerous chamber music concerts at the Residenz- the main palace of the Prince-Archbishops, in whose ornate gilt stuccoed and frescoed rooms Mozart performed his first court concert at age six -and Mirabell Palace, which Prince-Archbishop Wolf Dietrich, the visionary who hired Italian architects for Salzburg's Baroque architecture, built for his mistress, the mother of his 15 children. All of the master's string quartets are being performed at the Mozart Residence at Makartplatz 9, a grand six-room apartment where he lived from age 17 to 25, where his music and comments can be heard during a fascinating audio tour, and his instruments are on display. Not enough? Discussions about major influences that molded his personality and music will be held by the Mozarteum. The renowned Salzburg Marionette Theater is staging special one-hour Mozart shows, and Shaffer's play Amadeus was performed at an open-air, lakeside theater in nearby Seeham. Even a biking route in the Salzkammergut, the gorgeous lake district nearby where The Sound of Music was filmed, has a Mozart theme, as do biking routes in Bavarian lake districts. Many local hotels offer Mozart packages. For example, the Arthotel Blaue Gans-a stark hotel filled with modern art in a 650-year-old building on the Getreidegasse-combines a room with admission to his birthplace, a four-course dinner, generous buffet breakfast, and a Mozart CD. Vienna: Since Mozart lived at 5 Domgasse, behind the city's landmark St. Stephan's Cathedral, from 1784 to '87, and composed The Marriage of Figaro here, exhibits detail his time in Vienna and his music. An exhibit of Mozartiana-designed by 2004 Pritzker Prize-winning architect Zaha Hadid-is at The Albertina, a gilded 17th-century palace in the huge Hofburg (Imperial Palace) complex, whose virtual displays demystify some unusual aspects of Mozart's life, like belonging to the Freemasons. In Fall 2006b, an avant-garde festival, created by American opera and theater director Peter Sellars, features contemporary film, music, and architecture inspired by three themes from Mozart operas - Triumph, Reconciliation and Remembrance - takes place citywide. IF YOU GO: For information about Mozart 2006 activities, hotel and tour packages, and tickets, see: www.mozart2006.net/eng/index.html , as well as www.salzburg.info and www.vienna.info . Further information is available from the Austrian National Tourist Office, at www.austria.info . The Salzburg Festival Society, which offers preferential ticket handling and social events for members, is at www.sfsociety.org. |
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Walk
around Salzburg, an enchanting Baroque fantasy of a town that a photographer
once said makes you feel like you're "inside a souvenir snow dome," and you
can't help stumbling across places where Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart lived, worked,
drank, danced, and played, or hearing his immortal melodies peal from palaces,
churches, and strolling musicians. Ditto for Vienna, the Austrian capital, where
he lived for 10 years, married, died at age 35, and is buried.
Although
Mozart was born in Salzburg, where he lived until he was 25, he felt
unappreciated here. He once wrote to his father about the city, "When I play or
when any of my compositions are performed, it is just as if the audience were
all tables and chairs." Perhaps Salzburg is overcompensating out of guilt, but
there's no doubt it's the center of Mozart mania this year.
In
Mozart's Birthplace at Getreidegasse 9, an exhibit conjures up life while on
tour with his father, Leopold, the stage dad of all time, who trotted little "Wolfie"
all over Europe from the time he was six to play before royalty like a trained
monkey. By age eight, the pint-sized prodigy had already wowed courts in London,
Paris, Vienna, and Munich; thrown his arms around Marie Antoinette, telling her
he wanted to marry her when he grew up; and stayed in fine hotels and homes of
noble families, developing a taste for the good life. 
The
imperial capital of the Hapsburg Empire is not to be outdone. Placido Domingo
sang at the opening concert of the Vienna Symphony on Mozart's birthday at the
Theater an der Wien, where Mozart operas will be performed and where Sir Simon
Rattle conducts Mozart's last three symphonies in December. The Vienna
Philharmonic will perform the Requiem, his last work, at the Staatsoper on
December 5-the day Mozart died. The Volksoper and Musikverein concert hall also
offer Mozart-packed schedules year-long. Open-air concerts are being held, as
well.